The biology of morality

A recent study suggests that morality may owe more to biochemistry than to authority or social convention.

Diverse lines of evidence point to a basic human aversion to physically harming others. First, we demonstrate that unwillingness to endorse harm in a moral dilemma is predicted by individual differences in aversive reactivity, as indexed by peripheral vasoconstriction. Next, we tested the specific factors that elicit the aversive response to harm… These simulated harmful actions increased peripheral vasoconstriction significantly more than did witnessing pretend harmful actions or to performing metabolically matched nonharmful actions. This suggests that the aversion to harmful actions extends beyond empathic concern for victim harm. Together, these studies demonstrate a link between the body and moral decision-making processes.

The study was published in the journal Emotion by the American Psychological Association.

Night of the living…plants?

The Washington Post reports that a team of Russian scientists has successfully reanimated a flowering plant from some old seeds. Really old seeds.

The Russian research team recovered the fruit after investigating dozens of fossil burrows hidden in ice deposits on the right bank of the lower Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia, the sediments dating back 30,000-32,000 years.

What makes this so remarkable is that according to top scholars at ChristianAnswers.net, this is three times longer than the entire earth has been in existence, making it clear that the Russians have not only resurrected an extremely ancient species, but have found a way to recover plant materials from some other dimension, like maybe heaven. Or something. It’s probably quantum.

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Quantum.

Sabotaging Science

Via Greg Laden’s blog, this leaked document from climate change denialists:

Dr. Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. His effort wil focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain — two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science. We tentatively plan to pay Dr. Wojick $100,000 for 20 modules in 2012, with funding pledged by the Anonymous Donor.

Is that for real? Holy crap.

 

Consistency with the truth

Our recent (and ongoing?) discussion with Kevin got me thinking about truth and the supernatural. By definition, the difference between a true story and a false one is that the true story is consistent with reality and the false one isn’t. This consistency has two aspects: negatively, consistency means the true story does not contradict reality, and positively, it means that there’s a connection between the events in the story and the events in the real world, above and beyond what’s reported in the story itself.

The the first aspect is fairly clear, and I think most of us think of consistency as non-contradiction. The positive aspect of consistency is just as important, however. Let’s look at an example. In the summer of 2009, a mob of vigilantes demanded that police arrest a goat, on the grounds that he was really a car thief who had transformed himself into a goat upon being apprehended. Was their story true? If it was, then we ought to find connections between the story and the reality above and beyond what was reported. For example, car thieves don’t typically walk around naked, looking for cars to steal, because that’s a sure way to attract unwanted attention! So was the goat dressed in human clothes? If not, where are the clothes?

Goats are easy to lock up, and legal to kill. If this story were true, then it’s describing a suspect who used black magic to make himself more vulnerable to the retributions of the mob. And why would he be stealing cars when he could be using his magical powers to become an overnight celebrity, changing from human to goat and back for astonished audiences around the world? And so on.

In other words, the implications of the story go far beyond the immediate report in the story itself. If the story were true, then there would be a number of other things that would be true as well. Thus, we can check the validity of the report by following up on all the implications of the story. If people report a supernatural occurrence, and their story implies the existence of other facts that ought to be present in the real world, then it’s reasonable and reliable to assess the veracity of the story by checking for the existence of the implied consequences. And that’s what I referred to as “the 7th criterion,” in my review of the six criteria William Lane Craig claims to use in assessing the historicity of the resurrection.

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Damned if he do, damned if he don’t.

Over at Evangelical Realism, I’m having an interesting conversation with one Kevin Harris, who gives his web site as William Lane Craig’s reasonablefaith.org, on the topic of “The 7th Criterion.” If you’ve read the post, you may recall that I proposed a 7th criterion for historical authenticity, in addition to the 6 Craig provides: to be historically authentic, a report must be consistent with real-world truth. Kevin originally criticized the 7th criterion for having an anti-supernatural bias, but I pointed out that it’s really a bias against falsehood, and that if a bias against falsehood is an anti-supernatural bias, that in itself tells you something about the supernatural. Kevin agreed that we want to avoid falsehood, but told me not to equivocate “falsehood” with “the supernatural,” which was ironic. My reply led to Kevin’s latest response to me, which is, shall we say, interesting.

The problem, I think, is that I’m holding up a perfectly fair and reasonable and even fundamental criterion. A true report, by definition, is one that is consistent with the real-world truth. Before we accept an ancient story as historically authentic, therefore, we should first examine whether or not it is consistent with real-world truth. If it isn’t, then by definition it’s a false story, and it wouldn’t do to designate false stories as historically authentic!

For some reason, Kevin appears reluctant to commit himself to agreeing to measure the Gospel according to that standard. I’ll give you a sample below the fold.

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Low-cost space exploration

Recent budget cuts at NASA make it clear that the glory days are over, as far as funding is concerned. A report at the Discovery Channel website suggests the possibility of a lower-cost alternative to all those big, expensive rockets and stuff.

Over the past 50 years, billions of dollars have been spent visiting our nearest neighbor in space, the moon. It’s the only extraterrestrial body humans have ever walked on. Besides the United States and Russia, Japan, China, India and the European Space Agency have all sent robotic spacecraft moonward…

But why bother? says a group of parapsychology sleuths who accuse NASA of hiding evidence of aliens on the lunar surface.

Yep, a group of psychics has used “remote viewing” to discover that the Apollo 16 astronauts actually discovered wreckage of an alien spacecraft that crashed on the moon. The wreckage can even be seen in published photos—cleverly disguised as ordinary rocks and dirt. Damn those government censors for covering this all up!
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Dialogs with Eric, Part 2: Does God believe what men say?

In my post on salvation by faith, I mentioned the fact that God does not behave as though He believed all the things men say about Him, particularly as concerns His alleged love for us and His alleged desire to be part of a personal, loving and real relationship with each of us. Eric takes issue with this observation, and offers a number of standard Christian responses, but also expresses the wish that I would say more about what I mean. And I’m glad to do so.

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Eyewitness

Here’s an lightly-edited excerpt from this week’s installment of my chapter-by-chapter analysis of William Lane Craig’s book, On Guard:

In a study published in 2003 [PDF], psychology researchers Gary Wells and Elizabeth Loftus gave an example of how eyewitness testimony can evolve over time. A young woman was sexually assaulted and her friend was murdered. The young woman, Sherry Gillaspey worked with a police artist to put together a composite sketch of the assailant, and based this sketch, a young man named Thomas Brewster became a “person of interest.”

What happened next is a textbook case of how eyewitness testimony can be “improved” over time.

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Depending on ignorance

This is proving to be a fun week. On Sunday I observed that the Gospel is a story and that we do not see God showing up in real life, attending church, and raising the long-dead. Jayman777 objected to that observation and tried to refute me—by supplying more stories about people seeing alleged miracles. He continues the same attempt in a second post, but like the first one, he only reinforces my original observation.

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Debunking Skepticism

A believer who goes by the handle “Jayman777” has written a blog post taking me to task. He’s not happy with my remarks at Evangelical Realism about how William Lane Craig handles the historical arguments for Jesus.

I have not read this book by Craig but DD’s post contains a few problems common to arguments from skeptics that should be addressed. I will restrict my focus to whether the Gospels are the best sources for reconstructing the life of the historical Jesus and whether the Gospels are generally reliable on historical matters.

Fair enough, I welcome his input. Let’s see what his criticisms are.

DD begins:

Christianity is, above all else, a story. . . . Miracles like healing someone born blind, or resurrecting someone who died three days ago, only happen in the tales told from the pulpit and in ancient parchments.

Notice how it is merely assumed that miracles do not happen in the present. It is hardly surprising that when you presuppose metaphysical naturalism, and you judge the Gospels on this basis, that the Gospels are determined to be of questionable historical value. But what if we take an approach that is neutral concerning the occurrence of miracles?

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